Pushing The Right Buttons - Jay Williamson - The Revenue Maze - Episode #010

Jay Williamson is the President/CEO at American Southwest Credit Union. He understands how to cultivate an award-winning corporate culture, and he’s passionate about growing leadership. Jay joins host Valerie Cobb to talk about leadership and how to find your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and increase your profits.

Takeaways:

One way to get out of the revenue maze is to feed your “cash cow.” If you don’t put enough resources into that, it will starve, and your company will fail.

  • You have to grow your top-line income so that you can grow your bottom line as well. That can help you maximize your opportunities.
  • It’s not about the money you make but the positive impact you have on society. You want to leave a positive lasting legacy.
  • With leadership, responsibility is to push the right buttons to motivate people and have them invested in their work.
  • You want to find the strength in each person and have them work at what they do best. This will increase their work performance as they are happier doing something they are good.
  • Set others up for success. If you can put others in a good position of success, your business will be better.
  • Take the time to get to know your employees. It will help them feel more connected to their work, and their performance will be better.

Quote of the Show:

5:00 “You’ve got to feed your cash cow at some point in time, figure out where you’re making money, and maximize those opportunities because you got to grow your top line income all the time so you can grow your bottom line.”

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Leadership: Pushing The Right Buttons – Jay Williamson – The Revenue Maze

I have an exciting guest for this episode and I’m super excited about him. He’s an innovative thought leader and understands how to cultivate an award-winning corporate culture, which is a big hot topic. He’s passionate about leadership growth and I’m excited to learn anything or two as well on this. He is the President and CEO of American Southwest Credit Union, Jay Williamson. Welcome.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you.

I am glad you’re here. It’s been fun to get to know you. We’re going to get to know a little bit more about you but first, we always have to start the show coming out swinging with what is one thing that the readers can do to help themselves get out of the revenue maze.

Don’t forget to feed your cash cow.

That is very broad. Why don’t we elaborate and get a little deeper on that subject?

I’ll give an example of what we’ve been going through. We’ve grown about 30% in the last few years. I came here new to Credit Union so I was looking at all of our people, process and products. When I was looking at our lending side of it, I felt like we had all of those right things but we weren’t growing at the pace that we needed to. You then start digging into the data like, “Why? What’s wrong here?” If you’ve got the right people, product and processes, it gets boiled down to you not using technology right or you’re not devoting enough resources to it. We weren’t feeding our cash cow.

The loan department had stayed the same even though we had had another 30% or 40% more members and customers for demand. We increased that by another person. That person in our loan volume picked up another $1 million. We did it again. We’re up another $2 million. We weren’t feeding our cash cow to give us more milk. That gets easy to do whenever you’re in the day-to-day business taking care of things and things are flowing along well. You forget that you’re not devoting enough resources and you’re leaving dollars on the table. You got to feed your cash cow.

That’s an interesting subject because one of the biggest problems with that is even understanding which is your cash cow. You mentioned the loan department but how did you find out that was what they were missing from that opportunity? Some of the readers are pretty guarded on, “I have to hire somebody? That’s the money going out the door.” How did you create that blend and do that?

That is one of the things that we get to because as a CEO or business owner, you get busy in the day-to-day and you don’t necessarily want to. As matter of fact, when we had a person leaving that department, I went back and asked the staff, “If I pay all of you more money, can we do the same amount of production?” They were like, “No, our plates are full.” I started looking at, “If our plates are full, what are our wait times? How fast are we processing loans?” A loan is by far where my business makes the majority of its money. It’s easy to look at where we’re going to get the most bang for our button.

I was looking at those processes. I’m a big fan of Marcus Lemonis. That line comes from him, the people, product and processes but it works. Whenever you’re talking about the revenue maze, there are only a few normal things that everybody has to do. There are business basics or business basics. That’s one of them. We were looking at it. I knew my staff couldn’t do more. I looked at our wait times.

Even after we’ve added two new staff members to it, our wait times are still about the same. We haven’t even picked up enough steam yet to meet our current demand. There’s more demand out there than what we’re servicing because even though we’re doing an extra $2 million in loans every month over what we were two months ago, our wait times are still the same.

We still have more elasticity than we need to pick up, which is revenue left on the table. If you’re looking at those types of things, why do you need to feed your cash cow? An example for us is that $1 million at a 4.25% interest spread are about $250,000 every year on those extra $2 million. I can afford to obey a lot of people whenever we’re generating $250,000 more top-line income. That’s why I say, “You’ve got to feed your cash cow at some point in time, figure out where you’re making money and maximize those opportunities.” You got to grow your top-line income all the time so that you can grow your bottom line. That’s the basics of business.

You got to grow your top line income all the time that you can grow your bottom line. That’s the basics of business.

It’s funny because there are gray areas within that like you noticed, “I tried to go and pay and said I’ll pay you more if you can close more.” They said, “No, we’re at a max,” which is amazing. That was probably your first indicator. There’s too much business. What I love about what you’re talking about is that you communicated with the people who are touching those products. You must have noticed, “What’s happening here,” and then spoke with them.

When I introduced you, you talked about being passionate about growing leaders and then understanding how to cultivate an award-winning corporate culture, which to me goes hand in hand with what you were saying, “Feed your cash cow but how do you feed your cash cow?” You talk to your people to make sure. You did a great thing, people, process and performance.

I got that mixed up because there’s another person that does people’s processes and performance anyways. You started talking with your people and found where the cash cow was hitting hard. You then were willing to throw some money at it which sometimes is hard for small businesses. They get nervous like, “What if we don’t ride this if we spend the money and then we’ve got to let somebody go later when the wave is over?”

How do you work those dynamics? You’ve got culture and people. We’re in a hot market. What do you foresee? Do you foresee that changing, the human capital count staying right where it is or moving people around a little? How do you deal with that after riding a wave like that? Some people are reluctant to hire because they don’t want to contract either. They want to have that growth mindset.

Nobody wants to lay somebody off. As an employer or the boss, the hardest and worst part of anybody’s job is to tell them they don’t have one anymore. The way the labor market is, that’s not going to be the case. There’s enough turnover. We won’t overhire in that particular department. I could shift somebody to someplace else in our organization.

The great part of growth is you have more opportunities to do it. I don’t necessarily think our market is going to get any easier in hiring talent. I don’t know that in many years of my career that there’s ever been a time that people weren’t always in demand and the best people always paid for themselves. Most people rise to any expectations.

Technically, I’m in a nonprofit business but we talk about profit all the time because it is a business. The more that we can generate, the more we can do and the more opportunities that we can do for our community and our staff. To me, that’s the whole driving. The only reason I feel like I’m a CEO is that it allows me to make an impact on my community and more people than what I was doing when I was not a leader.

TRM 10 | Leadership

Leadership: The more that we can generate, the more we can do for our community and our staff.

When I was in production, I did a certain number and I took care of my customers. That was great. I love that relationship side of it but it wasn’t affecting nearly as many people in the community as I get to as a leader. One of the reasons I’m passionate about developing other leaders is that there are many opportunities there. That’s how you can make a mark.

To me, it’s not about the money you make. It’s about the mark that you leave in society. How I’m going to make the biggest impact on society is through the people that I affect on a daily basis, the 75 families that I’m responsible for and the decisions that I make are responsible for. They go out and affect our communities. The people’s side of it is what matters, especially to me.

For my company, I had three key things. It took me a while to come to it. I was in a Vistage meeting. One of the Vistage Chairs was talking about her vision and different methodologies, call it a vision or a mission. You have a vision and mission statement. Some of them flip-flop it. If you’re a Jim Collins fan, it might be one direction. I feel like a business can change lives faster than any government can. For me, it’s God, family and business. When I was talking to somebody, they were like, “You put God before family?” I’m like, “That’s a whole another dialogue. Let’s get down to the business part of this.”

The business part is you want to help people lift and elevate. That’s one of the easiest ways to help lift them out of poverty and help them grow. I love that you’re cultivating leaders because that’s so cool. How did you come to that? How did you want to help cultivate leaders? What started that? Don’t go back 100 years. How and why’d you done that?

It was one of those a-ha moments in my life. I was talking to a friend. He was brought up being a leader and a manager. He said, “The reason I’m a mechanic is that I know if I turn this particular nut or bolt, I’m going to get this particular result. I don’t know how to do that with people but I can with mechanics. I don’t know what buttons to push.” I had always at that point in my life been accused of pushing people’s buttons. I realized mostly I’m pushing them for the wrong reasons. If you think about it as a leader, if you can push somebody’s button for the wrong reason, you can also push somebody’s button for the right reason.

I knew that if I had that ability to set people off one way or the other, that was my gift and skill. I realized that I could be a leader and push the right buttons in people, get the right responses and make a difference. To me, it won’t matter how much money my company makes but it’ll make a difference in how the families are treated and how they’re able to take care of it because if I can take care of my people, they’re going to make a difference in the community. If you can change a community, you can change the world. That’s my philosophy. I want to be a leader and help develop other leadership skill because I knew I could push the right buttons more times than not.

If you can change a community, you can change the world.

That’s a fun story. Thanks for sharing that. You learned that’s what you wanted to do but you had to start somewhere. It’s not like you learned to be a leader overnight. Maybe you have the sense to be a leader but there are skillsets, especially with the ideology out there that if you find the right job and passion, then you never work a day in your life. That generation is moving up through those rings, their why, the Simon Sinek Why and all of that kind of stuff. It’s not easy to be a leader because of that balance but you had to learn it somewhere. What did you do to get there?

I was very lucky. My father was a serial entrepreneur. I grew up around him. He would take me to work with him at a very young age. He was very specific about why he was doing business because it was a family atmosphere for him. I will give you a story. One of the things that I do still is he bought a plane and got his pilot’s license because he had nursing homes in multiple states. It was a big deal to him to make sure that everybody got paid on their payday. He would fly there, hand out the paychecks and let his staff know that he cared about them and how much they were affecting the residents of the nursing homes and our families as well.

He showed me that from a young age. I still hand deliver a couple of checks every year so I can tell my staff how much I appreciate what they’re doing for our organization. I saw that growing up and he turned over the family farm to me when I was sixteen and let me make all the mistakes that I would’ve gotten fired from any other organization. He would tell me why I made the mistakes, why they mattered and why I had to take care of the small things. He always told me, “If you take care of your pennies, the dollars take care of themselves.” That’s true, whether it’s in money or business. If you’re taking care of the small things, the big things tend to take care of themselves.

I was raised that way. I always knew I wanted to be a leader and be self-employed because that was the model that I had growing up. I saw what it was able to do for my family. It was ingrained in me that’s where I was always going to be. I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen years old. I did it poorly, to begin with, but at a young age, it enable me to be successful at this point.

It sounds like a great upbringing. Some in society you’re not blessed with as much. That’s a cool story.

I was blessed I have great parents.

Me too. Richard Branson posted on dyslexia and I thought, “This is a great story to share on LinkedIn.” It goes along with what you’re saying. As a leader, you have to be able to work around other people’s strengths. It’s not about you. It’s about them. That article was what he had been taught by his parents. It was like, “You can do anything.” A lot of engineers and such are dyslexic hayed works for and they said there’s a statistic on dyslexia. It was interesting what he said and it was what you were taught. Your best leadership coach was your dad. He told you what you did well and didn’t do well in a very safe and warm environment.

Sometimes not so safe or warm.

I coached singers for about ten years and I used to tell them, “Go down to your church. Go ahead and volunteer your services so you can get used to being in front of a friendlier audience than the ones that are paying you.” It doesn’t mean that you didn’t learn a lesson there but it is friendlier. That’s a cool story. I’m excited about that. Do you have some program that you’ve set up for growth in the American Southwest Credit Union that you’re working at?

One of our strategic plans that we did was to launch what we’re calling ASCU University so that people in our organization can go and spend some time in each department so they can understand how the small parts work together and also be exposed to see if there’s something else in the organization that they would rather do so they can find their strengths and work at their best capacity. The fun part about being a leader is finding somebody’s strength and allowing them to work on their strength and be successful. If you have 75 people being successful in being their best selves, if they’re successful at work, they’ll probably be successful at home. If they’re successful at home, they’ll be successful at work.

TRM 10 | Leadership

Leadership: The fun part about being a leader is finding somebody’s strengths and allowing them to work on those and be successful.

That allows them to live their best life and impact their family. One of the things that we’re doing here is trying to set up the ASCU University so that people can see the whole and get a big picture of it. Also, hopefully, find their next position where they can maximize and do what they do best so that they’ll be successful. It allows them to earn their best earning potential. I want to set people up to be successful. That’s how we’re doing it. Hopefully, we’ll launch our first class in July 2023.

I’d love to know how it turns out for you on that. It sounds like a good program. The interesting thing is some of the readers might not even realize that in their small organizations, they typically have state funding to help train for that. There are a lot of programs and grants out there for doing that to help pay for the programs to do it. That’s cool that you’re doing that.

We hired a whole organization as a trainer to do the onboarding and help run the school. We’ve tried to grow our base. You have to be committed to it. It’s scary for a small business to hire new people in new positions. If you want to be self-employed or have a business, you’ve got to scale at some point. That’s the whole thing behind this and how you maximize your opportunities and revenue maze. It’s part of it. You have to buy that bullet and say, “I’m going to do these things because it’s in the best interest of our future.”

It’s scary for a small business to hire new people in new positions. If you’re going to be self-employed or have a business, you’ve got to scale at some point.

Are you a Gallup or Clifton StrengthsFinder achiever, all of that when you were talking about laying into their strengths or do you use Culture Index, DISC or any of those to help you play to their strengths?

I’ve done all of those. To some extent, they help but it comes down to finding out what people are passionate about because that’s when they’re going to succeed. It doesn’t matter what it is that you can be passionate about, you’re still going to be in your best frame whenever it’s something you’re excited about and care about. I was a very good producer when I was doing production but whenever I found my niche in this side of it, it’s even gone even more exponentially because I love what I do and I’m passionate about it.

It even allowed me to excel beyond what I would’ve in the production side of it. Most of the time, especially in business, people don’t take the time to find out what people are passionate about. They put them in a role and if they’re successful, they’ll leave them there or promote them. To me, one of the things and the fun things is to get to know my people and find out where they are. Sometimes they don’t even know.

That’s one of the reasons we’re doing the ASCU University. If you’re not in your best spot, even though you thought you were, let’s put you in your best area and give you a chance to do something because that’s when we’re all going to succeed together. Everybody thinks being the CEO is great and that I’m the important one. I’m the least important person in my organization. I touch the least amount of people. I do the least amount of work daily. It’s all the other people that are getting everything done. It’s not me. I’m trying to find them and make sure they’re doing great.

Part of the reason I brought up some of the assessments is a subject that you said. Sometimes they don’t even know what they’re passionate about. At least it gives me a little bit of a starting point. Do you have teens?

I have a teen.

It’s the whole, “How’d you do today?” “Great,” and walk off, “Let’s have open-ended questions.” Sometimes people do clam up when you’re trying to help them discover what they’re doing. Some get very guarded. We all come from different backgrounds but sometimes it’s like, “Why are you asking me these questions?” Especially with some of the people I’ve worked with. It takes a little bit to tear down those walls and get them to open up on it or be observant, shutting up and listening, hearing them say something. That’s why I asked you a little bit about that. It sounds like you’ve got it dialed in and you don’t get the “yup” answer.

We do but I try to every Friday go around and see all my employees and talk to them. It does take a long time to break down some of those walls so people do trust. I realized, “I’m not walking around here every Friday just because. It’s because I do care. I want to hear what’s going on in your life so that we can put 2 or 3 pieces together.” If I don’t get to know you and you don’t get to know me, we don’t work our best selves in it. That’s another thing. The farther you get up the ladder and you get invested in what you’re doing every day, you stop to take time to get to know your people and invest in them as well.

TRM 10 | Leadership

Leadership: The farther you get up the ladder, the more you should stop to take time to get to know your people and invest in them as well.

I make it happen. I try every Friday to go around and see everybody so that we’re always having those conversations and dialogues. I won’t learn in the first 3 or 4 months. It’ll be the 6th or 7th month something will pop up and that passion will come out. It comes out as a normal conversation. If you’re not having those regularly, it never happens. That’s why the test sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. It’s the conversations that when you find it. Where I spend more of my time talking to people than trying to do the test and letting them see theirs. I’ve taken those tests and they’ll come out different every time I take them.

Sometimes, it’s funny how spooky and accurate they are. They do change different moods. Sometimes, somebody will come to me and say, “I want to grow in the company.” That’s when I will do a test to say, “Where do you want to be if they don’t know where they want to be?” In coaching people, a lot of times I will have them do DISC simply because it’s a communication preference. Sometimes you can break down barriers if you know how they have a tendency to communicate or like communication.

I was laughing because I worked for some engineers at some point and they don’t like the executive summary. They want every single detail. There’s the executive summary, “Give it to me in five seconds.” It’s funny when you’re working with people like that. The part of getting to know you is getting to know some of the things that you like. As we talk about some of this stuff, other than your father, who would be your role model? Somebody would know that you are excited about or they may not know him but describe him.

The lead pastor or the CEO of Life.Church. I listen to his podcast all the time and I’m drawing an absolute blank on his name. He does a great job. He has a podcast every week. He always says, “When the leader grows, everybody grows.” To me, that is the truth. One of the things we instituted here is all my senior leadership has to go through some type of leadership training every year. You can’t put into people if you’re not putting back into yourself. Once you pour out the cup and it’s empty, it’s empty. You got to fill your cup up sometimes. That leadership development skill has always got to be growing. I try to listen to multiple podcasts all the time. My leadership skills are growing and then I can pour more out into other people.

We’ll have to call him out and thank him. If I call somebody out like Richard Branson, he doesn’t know who I am but I’m going to call him out anyway. He did a great job.

Craig Groeschel.

Thank you, Craig Groeschel. That’s awesome. You talked about filling your cup and that’s from a business standpoint. Personally, what do you do for fun to fill your cup? I get it. Leadership is a blast but that’s not what you do all the time. I hear you are into sports.

I love OU Football. Honestly, one of my weaknesses has been I haven’t filled my cup. I used to always go hunting and fishing and take that time to recharge. It does wonders for me. I always come back as a better person when I’ve done those. I looked back and I hadn’t been done hunting and fishing in a year and a half. My wife was like, “It’s about time for you to leave.”

She knows you. You need some space.

“Here’s a plane ticket. Go fishing. See you later. Get out of the house.” As leaders, that’s the easy thing, especially leading out of a pandemic. It took all of our hearts and souls. We were changing so much so fast. I take responsibility personally. I feel like I’ve got 75 lives that depend on every decision I make. Those families depend on me to make the right decision. I poured everything I had into trying to lead and make the organization safe so we didn’t have to lay off anybody.

I remember in the March of 2020 going to everybody and saying, “I don’t know what’s going to happen here any more than you do but my commitment is that we won’t lay off if we don’t have to and we’re going to take this month by month.” I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to be a leader during a pandemic but I hope I never have to do it again. That was brutally hard.

Most said, “Be very transparent with your organization.” We learned firsthand what it is for what we would call those clauses act of God, “Any kind of act of God, we will deliver at this date.” COVID was one of those things that went, “That’s why that clause is there, not just weather.” I am somewhat joking about it but it’s true. It was something that everybody went, “We don’t know what we don’t know so we’re going to do our best every day and see what happens.”

You hit the key. It’s transparency. I tell my organization all the time, “We’re going to be the most transparent organization out there because it’s the right thing to do.” If you tell people, “We’re making all these things and we need to make an income so that we don’t have to lay you off,” they get it. They’ll do the right things and make the right decisions. They’ll produce because it’s in their best interest to produce more times than not.

The bad employee or apple is a rarity. Most of the time, the organization was not transparent enough. They don’t see the reason or know the why behind it and how it affects them. What they’re why in what they’re doing is important. We try to be as transparent as we possibly can. That’s not easy. Sometimes you forget the details. I forget to share all the time. It’s not that I won’t share the details. Sometimes I think I’ve shared them when I didn’t. That’s easy to do.

I forget whom I told what to because I’m a fractional CRO or CSO and I’ll be working with one company and think that I’ve mentioned something and then I was like, “This is a different moment.” It’s easy to do. Communication is a difficult thing. I felt transparency is one of the reasons that people don’t get buy-in from their employees because they’re not transparent. That doesn’t help feed the cash cow either because they’re not going to talk to you either if you’re not transparent.

You can’t communicate enough in my opinion. Everybody gets so secretive about what their business is and what makes them why. If somebody can do what I’m doing better, more power to them. That’s capitalism. I’m happy to share with anybody what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. If you can do it better, more power to you. That makes us better in the long run. I hope all my staff knows exactly what we’re doing all the time. I try to communicate it every month.

TRM 10 | Leadership

Leadership: If somebody can do what you’re doing better, more power to them. That’s capitalism.

Lift and elevate. If everything starts to work better and things work better for you, it works better for everybody. I’ve had people that are like, “Why are you training me?” I’m like, “Maybe you want to take my job someday. Maybe I won’t be here someday. Maybe it will elevate me to a different position too. I don’t know.” You never know what that’s going to do. You’ve got to be able to trust that you’re doing the right thing to help them along the way. It’s like your dad said and I can’t remember the whole saying because I’ve never used it before but it was a pennies and dollars saying.

“Take care of your pennies and the dollars take care of themselves.”

It’s the details. I’m making sure that they’re aware of those details. What’s your favorite sport? You talked about Oklahoma.

OU Center football. There’s no question about it.

Hunting and fishing because it’s out in nature. It gets you to a little bit of debriefing. Do you have a trip planned to be able to do that?

I came back from a trap line trip in Canada and 100 miles out in the bush. We were as remote as you could be. It was great to be able to walk outside and you could hear the snow falling. It was quiet. It was wonderful.

That’s wonderful. A leader needs to recharge. Some of the readers would love to know a little bit about where they can reach you, maybe collaborate or get the services of American Southwest Credit Union. Where can they get ahold of you?

I’m on LinkedIn. You’re welcome to leak it out. I’m not on there very often. If I don’t reply immediately, please don’t take offense to it. My email is CEOServantLeader@gmail.com. Reach out there. Hopefully, that’s an easy one to remember. I’m happy to help anybody and everybody. I got to the position that I’m in because a lot of people are willing to invest in me and spend a lot of time. If I can give that back, I’m happy to help.

I’m sure that American Southwest is happy to have you because it sounds like it’s flourishing under your leadership. It’s fantastic. That’s pretty much it for this episode. Readers, I am so grateful that you read this blog. If you liked it, like, share or love it, whatever you want to do with it. Thanks for being a part of it. Jay, thank you for being a part of the show.

It’s my pleasure. I love this show. The people that you’ve had have given great ideas. I’m a big fan. It’s an honor. Thank you.

Have a blessed day, everybody.

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About Jay Williamson

Jay Williamson

Jay Williamson is the President/CEO at American Southwest Credit Union. He understands how to cultivate an award winning corporate culture and he’s passionate about growing leaders. Jay joins host Valerie Cobb to talk about leadership and how to find your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and increase your profits.

About The Author : Valerie Cobb

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